“I am curious about the fact that there are some people we just can’t stop looking at,” says Swedish photographer Elsa Hammarén. That fascination is on the coronary heart of Andie, Darling, her ongoing documentation of the lifetime of Andie, the challenge’s inspiration, over the previous two years.
The pair first met when Andie was 22, at a Midtown lodge room throughout what was meant to be a one-off shoot. “Her t-shirt, with an American flag motif, was hanging loosely on her body and I could see her bony shoulders through the thin, white cotton. She moved around with such ease, only in her tee and pyjama shorts, already comfortable in my presence,” Hammarén remembers of that first encounter. From there emerged a connection that was the genesis for an intimate account of Andie’s day by day life – captured between her Brooklyn condo and East Village dwellings.
It’s a degree of direct documentation that feels uncommon in a world outlined by the ultra-fast capturing, importing and sharing of photos on-line. For Andie, the challenge has been a technique to outline how she desires to be seen. “As a trans girl, I’m not always entirely comfortable with others’ gaze on me – whether it be men with underlying intentions or people’s general curiosity,” she explains. “With Elsa, I feel incredibly seen and understood. She’s not only capturing me, she’s a friend who understands my issues with how I’ve been seen, and seems to want to honour that in how she presents me to the world. It’s definitely galvanised me to honour my own desires of how I’d like to be seen, rather than just fold into whatever other people may want me to be.”
Throughout Andie, Darling, the challenge engages with the thought of a muse. “The term is used historically, usually a male artist portraying a female, and not uncommonly someone they had a sexual relationship with. This use of the term could feel outdated to many. I am curious about it though, and believe it can be refined in a more collaborative manner but with the same foundation as the word’s origin, an almost obsessive love and inspiration for one person,” Hammarén explains.
This feeling of commentary is central to the challenge. While some pictures painting Andie in additional staged or referential types, the bulk seize her deep throughout the mundanities of on a regular basis life – lounging on condo beds, misplaced in music, or wandering via the town. It’s these moments that compound in one in every of Andie’s favorite pictures, “I’m sitting on a piano bench talking to her about some composition I had been writing and she shot me mid-sentence. I like how she’s able to capture me in moments like that, where I’m excited about something and full of energy.”
These strange intimacies are additionally captured within the pictures of bedside tables which seem within the challenge. Their surfaces are sometimes cluttered with tablet bottles of estrogen and spironolactone, strawberry melatonin gummies beside a vape, and a flat ginger ale. “I think our personal belongings reveal a lot about ourselves,” shares the photographer as she reveals the tales behind the pictures. “This poster is from Jesus Christ Superstar, which is a musical Andie loved as a child. There is a wooden box from Venezuela which Andie visited as a kid on a mission with her parents and a Victoria’s Secret mist she stole from an old employer she hated to work for, [and] never wore since the smell reminds her of him.”
Alongside these candid moments, some pictures are extra purposefully referential. The challenge’s namesake and underlying reference is that of Candy Darling, the actress and icon of trans visibility in 60s and 70s New York. “There’s a playful, more performative space that we also enter together, where we are dreaming. Sometimes we would aim to refer to a specific image such as Peter Hujar’s portrait of Candy Darling on her deathbed. Direct references like that rarely lead to a specific photograph, but rather to a space of playfulness and dreaming,” she explains. Other influences come to gentle in pictures, corresponding to Andie on Hammarén’s roof in a crimson coat, referencing Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Three Colours: Red.
While their collaboration started across the digital camera, their relationship has grown past it. Over the course of the challenge, Hammarén additionally started noticing modifications in herself. “I could notice an envy of assertiveness, admiration. A certain melancholia coming to light, something I perhaps see in Andie or project onto her; it could be both. My own image and identity, desires, how I wish to be or be seen myself – this is something I am still exploring,” she displays.
While the challenge has already culminated in gallery showings and options, Hammarén plans to proceed documenting Andie. “I admire photographers who return to or stick with their subjects. I also think of time as a tool in documenting Andie’s external world – seasons, lifestyle shifts, homes, economic situations, haircuts – as much as changes and explorations of our internal world(s).” It’s a follow of commentary and intimacy that’s already evident within the few years the challenge has been ongoing. “I imagine the work being a book after ten years of photographing her. A decade feels like a good amount of time.”